WTNL Chapter 66.2

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Chapter 66.2: “Why don’t we make a deal?”

Throughout this entire process, Chen Mo remained quiet, standing rigidly a few meters away. His gaze was averted, standing there like a statue carved from wood or molded from clay, as if his entire person had melded into the darkness.

Wang Hanyu half-knelt on the ground, his head raised, staring at the young man in front of him with a fervent gaze:

“Y-You, can you let me join the cult now?”

“Of course.”

The young man with amber eyes lowered his gaze. “Do you know what the doctrine of our sect is?”

“W-What?”

“Honesty and redemption.” Wen Jianyan leaned down slightly and affectionately stroked the other man’s cheek, then slowly stepped aside, revealing Chen Mo not far behind him:

“So, honestly seek redemption from him.”

He smiled gently, like a devil wearing an angel’s shell. “Only when my precious congregation agrees to your redemption will I allow you to join. Understood?”

Wang Hanyu couldn’t react for a moment.

He stared blankly at the young man before him, his gaze shifting back and forth between his former teammate and the Black faction streamer. Soon, after realizing exactly what the other party was saying, the color began to fade from his face bit by bit, until he looked as ghastly pale and fragile as a sheet of paper.

In the distance, Chen Mo was stunned.

He raised his eyes, looking at Wen Jianyan not far away in disbelief. His mouth parted slightly, but he couldn’t make a sound.

…Why?

According to his habits and style, he would absolutely never allow someone who betrayed and backstabbed him to live. However, Chen Mo also knew how to repay a debt of gratitude. Even though he wanted nothing more than to kill this two-faced hypocrite right before his eyes from the bottom of his heart, and Wen Jianyan had also said he didn’t plan on completing the main quest, upon hearing Wang Hanyu’s tearful pleas, he still chose to halt his revenge and called Wen Jianyan.

He always remembered that, no matter the motive, this person had saved him, fishing him out from an almost certain-death situation.

Chen Mo didn’t like owing others favors.

Wen Jianyan walked over, gently patted Chen Mo’s shoulder, and whispered with a smile, “I’ll leave him to you.”

With that, he put the Soul-Locking Urn into his pocket, turned, and left.

Chen Mo stared blankly at the other’s retreating back.

The young man’s slender figure inexplicably overlapped with the bloody, holy light-shrouded figure from his chaotic memories caused by his dropping SAN value.

He felt as if his heart had been ruthlessly struck. The shock and emotion he had deliberately suppressed earlier, and even… submission, instantly poured out like floodwaters bursting through a gate, leaving Chen Mo momentarily confused.

It was as if… he truly was the other’s believer.

Too strange.

Too… terrifying.

He didn’t like owing others favors.

But now, for some reason, he owed an even deeper debt.

Wang Hanyu sat blankly in place, a few words echoing in his mind:

“The Tower, upright.”

“Everything you have will begin to collapse and disintegrate from the core. Every bad thing you’ve ever done will come back to bite you.”

—

After parting ways with Chen Mo and the others, Wen Jianyan resumed his path toward the destination he had decided on from the very beginning.

He had one thing he needed to confirm.

Wen Jianyan skillfully navigated through the map’s twists and turns, finally stopping in front of a familiar door.

He reached out and slowly pushed the door open.

In the initial surface world, it was located exactly opposite 1304. The moment one stepped out the door and crossed the corridor, they could enter the room where the tragic family massacre had occurred.

Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

The familiar smell of incense ash wafted over. The cramped, messy, narrow room opened up before his eyes. In front of the small Bodhisattva statue, scarlet electronic candles glowed, barely dispelling the thick darkness.

The rocking chair let out a creaking sound.

Hearing the door being pushed open, the rocking chair’s sound paused for a moment. An elderly voice sounded from deep within the room, “Xiuqing, is that you?”

“It’s me,” Wen Jianyan replied, stepping deeper into the room.

As the distance closed, the old woman’s figure was right before his eyes. Just like when Wen Jianyan left, she leaned back in the rocking chair, her lower half covered with a thick blanket.

She raised her cloudy yet affectionate eyes, searching the air for the visitor’s figure, then slowly and tremblingly reached out her hand toward Wen Jianyan. “Why were you gone so long, Xiuqing? Spend more time with Mom when you have the time.”

Wen Jianyan stood unmoving in place. He lowered his gaze, lightly sweeping it over her.

His voice was gentle and soft:

“Of course.”

Wen Jianyan looked around the room, seemingly searching for something.

Soon, his gaze landed on a corner of the room, and his eyes couldn’t help but light up slightly.

“After all, I’m very busy with work,” Wen Jianyan replied in a completely normal, even smiling voice, while bending down to pick up a clothes-drying pole from the corner.

He weighed the heavy metal object in his hand, narrowed his eyes to gauge the distance between them, and then silently swung his arm in a full arc:

“But don’t worry, I will definitely spend more time with you from now on.”

Whoosh—

The clothes-drying pole swung through the air and missed.

“…”

The old woman in the rocking chair slowly stood up. Her facial features shifted at a visible rate, turning into Granny Wen’s appearance in the blink of an eye.

Her eyes were covered in white cataracts, and the loose, heavily wrinkled skin on her face trembled as she spoke. Although the smile on her face was no different from before, it somehow carried a particularly sinister and gloomy undertone:

“Young man, don’t you know how to respect the old and cherish the young?”

What a pity he missed.

Wen Jianyan tossed aside the clothes-drying pole in his hand with some regret.

“Old lady, have you heard the saying, ‘to live to an old age and still not die is to be a thief’?” He said with a smile, “Birth, aging, sickness, and death—these are the laws of nature.”

The wrinkles on Granny Wen’s face trembled again. Those eyes covered in white cataracts stared dead-on at the young man before her.

The combined old and new grudges of having her room smashed and her Bodhisattva statue destroyed made her expression look exceptionally ferocious.

Granny Wen asked coldly:

“How did you find out?”

“Do you mean, how did I find out you were a fake?”

Wen Jianyan leaned against the door and smiled. “Staying in the rocking chair the whole time wouldn’t have mattered. But your posture didn’t change at all, and your right hand remained positioned slightly below your chest, exactly five centimeters above the blanket I tucked in—absolutely identical to when I left.”

Wen Jianyan’s gaze swept over the blanket that had fallen to the floor.

“As long as someone is alive, it’s impossible for them to not dare move a muscle for such a long time, right?”

“That was the first point.”

“…There’s a second?” Granny Wen slowly narrowed her eyes.

Wen Jianyan nodded. “Naturally.”

He slouched loosely against the door, appearing flippant and nonchalant. “Because this place actually isn’t the real external world either, right?”

“…”

When he said those words, Granny Wen’s expression immediately darkened.

Wen Jianyan had initially only been guessing about this point.

After all, even when realizing someone was meddling behind the scenes, she continuously funneled new streamers into the inner world. Wen Jianyan didn’t think Granny Wen was that inflexible and stubborn.

On the contrary, she was full of wicked schemes.

This could be seen from how she tried to sacrifice all the streamers right from the very beginning.

It was Granny Wen’s consistent modus operandi that betrayed her.

Desire and slaughter—only these two things could forge a Soul-Locking Urn. And those streamers who continuously betrayed their teammates for survival, writing their names on the yellow paper, were essentially participating in a ruthless mutual slaughter.

Regarding the map they were currently in, Wen Jianyan originally thought the outer world and inner world had merged. But after noticing the anomalies in Granny Wen’s behavior, he began re-evaluating his previous conclusions and realized things weren’t that simple.

The Granny Wen inside the instance didn’t know about the existence of the instance or the Nightmare System, and she certainly wouldn’t know about the instance’s alienation. Then, taking that premise out of the equation and looking at it strictly from what she did know: he had smashed the idol in her room, found the crucial manuscript hidden in its base, and then immediately escaped into the mirror.

As the mastermind who never intended to enter the mirror from the start, what would Granny Wen do?

The most efficient method, naturally, was to ride the wave and continue forging the Soul-Locking Urn according to the original plan.

She didn’t even need to completely alter the entire map; she just needed to tweak many details to resemble the real world. That would be enough to mislead the streamers into thinking the two worlds had merged, and then use this current method to make them mutually slaughter and betray one another.

This was also why Granny Wen couldn’t affect the area Wen Jianyan had been in earlier—the dimensions between mirrors were stacked on top of each other, not nested like Russian dolls. Based on the manuscript Wen Jianyan found in her room, Granny Wen could only influence the layer closest to her. She could send streamers into a deeper layer, but she couldn’t exert direct control over the second layer.

Of course, these were just Wen Jianyan’s guesses.

He didn’t have any concrete evidence, only his suspicions regarding Granny Wen’s behavioral logic. But for him, that was enough.

After entering 1304 and seeing Granny Wen disguised as the old lady, Wen Jianyan completely confirmed that his theory was correct.

If he were truly in the outermost surface world right now, regardless of whether the inner and outer worlds were overlapping, the person in the room wouldn’t have changed. Granny Wen didn’t possess enough power to manipulate the real world along with everything else.

Since the real old lady wasn’t here, this was definitely not the outermost layer.

Granny Wen stared dead-on at the young man a short distance away. The wrinkles on her face quivered slightly, and no extra emotions could be gleaned from her wizened face:

“What a pity.”

“You truly are a smart young man.”

The moment Granny Wen’s voice fell, the surrounding scenery changed instantly. The messy yet somewhat warm interior of 326 faded bit by bit like a discolored oil painting. The cramped space became filled with all sorts of bizarre magical instruments and many sinister-looking props hanging all over.

A brass Bodhisattva statue over a person’s height appeared in front of Wen Jianyan.

In the dim light, only the two blood-red electronic candles in front of the Bodhisattva statue remained unchanged, still glowing faintly.

Granny Wen gave Wen Jianyan an affectionate, even gleeful smile:

“—You stepped into my room after all.”

“Since you’ve already guessed so much, it doesn’t matter if I reveal a little more to you.”

Leaning on her cane, Granny Wen slowly walked to the table and sat down. Staring intently at the young man with her cloudy, cataract-covered eyes, the smile on her face slowly deepened. “Indeed, my influence in this world is limited. But as long as you’re in this world and have stepped into my room, you’ve entered my domain—no matter how clever you are, without my permission, you can’t take a single step out of here.”

A sinister smile appeared on Granny Wen’s old, ugly face. “What a pity. You were clearly so close to the truth, yet you still—”

The rest of her words got stuck in her throat.

The young man in front of her seemed completely oblivious to what she was saying. He looked left and right, eventually strolling over to the tall Bodhisattva statue. He leaned in close to inspect it and even reached out a hand, slightly bending his knuckles—

“What are you doing?!”

Granny Wen’s voice suddenly turned sharp.

Wen Jianyan paused his movements, withdrew his hand without any shame, and turned to look at Granny Wen. “Ah, nothing. I just wanted to confirm, I didn’t break it earlier, right?”

A look of regret appeared on his face:

“It’s rare to see modern craftsmanship done this delicately.”

Granny Wen: “…”

She was so angry her nose went crooked. Her facial features shifted under the intense fury, and her voice was wrapped in a terrifying rage that seemed capable of burning everything to ash. “You will pay the price for your disrespect—”

Before she could finish speaking, she saw the young man unhurriedly take something out of his pocket.

Clack.

An entirely pitch-black clay urn was placed on the table, emitting a soft sound.

In that instant, Granny Wen’s neck seemed to be gripped by an invisible force. Her eyes trembled slightly as she looked at the Soul-Locking Urn in front of her in sheer disbelief.

“Is this enough?”

Wen Jianyan asked with a smile.

He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Granny Wen. “You should know, right? This is the last Soul-Locking Urn. As long as it is destroyed, the evil spirits will be released—moreover, there is only one last step left. If I want to, I can unseal it right now.”

Wen Jianyan lightly tapped the rim of the urn with his fingertips. His amber eyes narrowed slightly, a smile glinting in their depths:

“Why do you think I willingly entered your territory?”

“Naturally, it’s because I don’t want to see that happen either.”

Wen Jianyan leaned forward slightly, his expression sincere and earnest:

“Why don’t we make a deal?”

__

Author’s Note:

#KindAndLovingGranny
#HonestAndTrustworthyWenJianyan

——

Gong: What? Wifey doesn’t want to see me? You’re just speaking out of anger; I don’t believe it.